“The design is 90 percent completed,” he said. “The city council needs to approve a continuing control agreement (to assure project implementation), and the Federal Transit Administration needs to approve our final design.”

BRT’s are sophisticated bus systems that have their own dedicated lanes on city streets. They are an effective substitute for light rail, running longer distance between stops and using stations where passengers pay before boarding, at a fraction of the cost of rail.

Jacksonville’s system will have a Downtown loop and four other corridors that feed into it from the North, East, Southeast and Southwest.

The contract for the Downtown part of the system will be let out first, with construction beginning next summer and the loop completed in 2015, Ford said. The remaining corridors are in various stages of planning and the whole system should be finished by 2020.

“Bus rapid transit helps people move longer distances through the city and to do it quicker,” said Brad Thoburn, JTA’s vice president of long-range planning and system development. “Today, people get frustrated when they travel from one side of town to Downtown, because it takes too long. A BRT will give them faster and more frequent service. It will become a backbone that all of the local routes feed into.”

Light rail systems can cost as much as $25 million to $50 million per mile, Thoburn said, whereas BRT’s usually cost from $3 million to $10 million. Jacksonville’s will cost $2 million per mile, because the city didn’t have to purchase a lot of right-of-way.

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